REMEMBERING VIETNAM

May 2000
		The following are selected viewer recollections of the Vietnam War era.

Online NewsHour Special Report: Remembering Vietnam April 12, 2000: A discussion on the Vietnam War's effects on the military. April 5, 2000: A look at the Vietnam War's historical impact Jan. 21, 1977: Carter's Pardon May 29, 1978: The Forgotten Wounded April 30, 1985: Lessons Learned April 30, 1990: Healing the Wounds April 17, 1995: Robert McNamara July 11, 1995: Normalizing Relations     March 23, 2000: Secretary of Defense Cohen discusses his trip to Vietnam. Aug. 9, 1999: A discussion of trade with the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam. May 15, 1997: Normalizing relations with Vietnam. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Asia.   PBS/The American Experience: Vietnam PBS/POV: RE:Vietnam U.S. State Department

Vera Austin of Linden, NJ: I lost my brother to the Vietnam war the year was 1968. My memories are painful. This event destroyed our family security and I learned about death at an early age. We went on; did we recover? No. The saddest part was the rejection he received at various military bases in the USA regarding housing for his family especially in the state of Kentucky. He left two small girls, a wife, parents who aged overnight, as well as siblings. I became angry at all America stood for, my anger has somewhat subsided over the years, yet I cannot help but think how very different our lives would be if this war had not happened. They were young guys who wanted to do their part. They deserved better. Never again. Never again should we enter something so blindly and without provocation.   George Rebovich, Jr. of Acton, MA: Strangely enough, one of my most vivid memories was on the day I stepped off the jet in LAX when I returned to the States. The contrast between the orderly, matter-of-fact way people were going about their everyday business and the chaos I saw as an artillery forward observer with the 101st Airborne Division near Hue invoked a surrealistic feeling in me. I felt like I was in a Salvador Dali painting. I was overwhelmed by the feeling to grab someone, anyone, by the shoulders and shake them out of their dream.   Janice Raleigh of Dumfries, VA: I can still remember vividly how a blue, very official looking, car pulled into my family's driveway. It was a warm December day in Fort Walton Beach, Florida and I was outside playing with a cousin. An older man got out of the car and asked me "Is your mother home?". I cannot explain how I knew, but I knew he was there to deliver bad news. I quized him as to why he wanted to know and who he was. He just continued to ask if my mother was home and walked to our front door. I walked backwards, trying to think of someway of not letting him reach the door. As it was a warm day, all the windows and doors were open. My aunt heard voices outside and came to the screen door, the man asked if she was Joan Raleigh, but she said no, let him in and they went inside to see my mother. I turned to my older cousin and said, "My father is dead". The man left after delivering the piece of paper and I went and hid in the bushes underneath my mother's window. It was open and my mother was crying like I've never heard anyone cry before. That verified my suspicion immediately. She gathered me and two of my brothers together that night and confirmed that my father was dead. I was seven, my brothers were five. I had a sister who about turned three and another brother who had just turned one. My mother struggled to raise and feed a family of 6 on meager Veteran's and Social Security benefits. She never went to work outside the home, but I tell you this woman can manage money. Unfortunately, she began to drown her sorrows in alcohol, a habit she cannot give up even today after surviving breast cancer and an aneurysm. At seven years old, I became the other parent. My father had always been the parent I was closest to, he was my buddy. He taught me how read, he taught me how to ride a bike, he saved me from the monsters in the closet at night. That would be no more. I had to do for myself now. ... In 1979, I went to dinner with a Vietnamese woman I had befriended. We were talking during dinner and I asked about her family. She then asked me about mine. I completely skipped over having a father at all. I was always uneasy about telling anyone he had died in Vietnam, and now someone from Vietnam was asking. When I told her he had died in Vietnam, tears streamed down her face. She took my hand and said she wished she could thank him for giving his life for her freedom. My father is buried at Arlington amongst the other war dead. He has a good spot, just down from the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers and National Airport has flight patterns that go directly above him so he can still hopefully hear the planes he loved so much. Janice Raleigh Eldest daughter of Maj. Louis R. Raleigh USAF   M. Virginia Pace of Bremerton, WA : I was there. I remember the confusion I felt about the war. Was it right or wrong? I was still a "save the world from Communism" person. Yet, I saw the futility of the war, the grave destruction that was going on I decided that this was wrong. Yet, I had to keep my thoughts to myself because I did not wish to be tagged an 'attitude'. I remember the hardship that everyone lived under. the smells, the dirt, the high level of anxiety the exhaustion. The mental srife that this was an unpopular war and I was there involved in such a political mess. But, I was there to help the wounded and support the able-bodied. So, I did my job with pride and compassion. I do not regret those actions. I do not regret being there. I regret the long term impact on my physical and mental well being.   Cynthia Hobbs of Los Angeles, CA: The images haunted me then, as a teenage girl and as a young woman, as the memories of the images haunt me now, as I close out my 40s. I lost no one I knew there, yet I felt like I knew them all. They were all my brothers and sisters. I was studying a poem in my senior year of high school ('69) by Milton, which read: "Any man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind..." It resonated deeply and still does. I will always have a place in my heart for the veterans, the nurses and medics, and the journalists. I wanted to become a photojournalist, a war correspondent, to show the world that war is hell - and that it changes you forever.   Jerry Baltzell of Dillsburg, PA: I was drafted into the Army in December, 1967. I spent thirteen months in Vietnam. I had mixed feelings about the Vietnamese people. Were they all the real enemy? I don't think so. The real enemy emerged years later. Veterans were discriminated against, redlined, unemployed, or underemployed. The real enemies ended up being the American Government and the American people. I am not sure what the hell we got out of the exercise, but veterans deserve respect and gratitude for being there and being used.   Jim Reid of Sydney, NSW Australia: I feel that the people of the USA are unnecessarily harsh on themselves when they look back at Vietnam. The lesson of history is that global ambitions of autocratic Communist governments was world domination. That their system of control was flawed has been proven by history; if America and her allies had not supported those less prepared nations then the ambition of world domination would have resulted in subjugation of many nations throughout Africa and South East Asia. The cost to the people of America in the number of young people lost in combat and subsequent drug problems was above and beyond their worst expectations but I would suggest that the rest of the world owes America and her allies, of which Australia I would hasten to point out was self funded and supported, a great debt. Without doubt the greatest of which is owed to America and only history will accurately judge if that debt results in a better world for us all.   John K. Rinehart of Madison, WI: I remember feeling extremely angry and frustrated all of the time. It seemed as the adminstration plied us with an unending barrage of misinformation. This war was different because our returning GI friends could authenticate or disprove that which our leaders told us. I remember watching TV with a friend who had recently returned. Nixon assured us in a press conference that we were not in Cambodia. Of course my friend had been in Cambodia only days before. I kicked in three TV's during this time.